Whisky for All

In Johannesburg last week, a new group of customers filed hesitantly into the well-stocked liquor stores of Eloff and Commissioner Streets. For the first time in South Africa's history, any nonwhite could buy a pint of strong ale or a bottle of whisky without breaking the law.

The prohibition that ended last week was premised on the same logic that guides most South African race policies: the irresponsible "natives" could not be trusted with real alcohol, and therefore had to be limited to some mealy white suds called "kaffir beer." Naturally, the blacks drank anyway--usually in dingy shebeens (speakeasies) with names like Falling Leaves or Back o' the Moon.

There they could buy a nip of bootleg whisky for $1.75, or lap up such crude homemade potions as Kill-Me-Quick, which occasionally did just that. Since liquor offenses accounted for a quarter of all convictions in South Africa's courts, the end of prohibition was strongly recommended by the police; an even more powerful lobby was South Africa's wine and brandy industry, which was pained at a gigantic market lying fallow.

On the first day of legal competition, shebeen prices skidded. Whisky was going for a mere $1.40 a shot, and a glass of beer cost 70^. "How can we make a living at these prices?" complained one of the swaggering shebeen queens whose establishments have long helped make life bearable for nonwhites in racist South Africa.

The queens are likely to live well for a while. The native bars being built by the government to encourage "civilized drinking" have not been completed. Even when they are, they will probably be a bit too sedate for those accustomed to the smoky, carefree, rock 'n' roll atmosphere of the shebeens. One legal requirement of the new bars not conducive to a carefree cocktail hour: all must be surrounded by a high wire fence.

South Africa's first nights of nonpro-hibition passed without the predicted riotous debauch in the native townships. Perhaps the blacks had been reading the special government pamphlet distributed for the occasion. It warned them that immoderate drinking "dims the eyes and confuses your thinking. It is bad for the liver and kidneys. Everything you conceal is revealed if you drink too much of a new liquor."

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